


Fingers and Keys

by jaztice



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Matthew Michael Murdock playing piano, Piano, Sort of a character study centered around Matt and playing piano, and I love Matt Murdock, because I love piano, because everyone needs that right, please take care of yourself, spoilers for the end of Marvel's Defenders, though if you haven't gotten around to finishing that and you're in this fandom tag, why are you here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 00:32:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13111929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaztice/pseuds/jaztice
Summary: Matthew Michael Murdock first touched a piano when he was four years old.(I wrote this right after watching Marvel's Defenders, but since I was working on another piece at that time in a completely different fandom, I told myself I wouldn't post it until after I finished. And then it sat on my computer and I forgot about it until this morning. So here it is, my Matthew Murdock piano fic, a good few months late to the party. Hope you enjoy.)





	Fingers and Keys

Matthew Michael Murdock first touched a piano when he was four years old.

Technically, it was an organ, not a piano, and the situation in it of itself was out of the ordinary. Jack Murdock usually left his young son in the care of some trustworthy neighbors while he was boxing, since his son wasn’t quite old enough to watch himself alone at home yet. But that particular night, their neighbors were all busy or gone or unwilling to help, so Jack dropped his son off at the church, asking the priest to watch him just for tonight, that this would never happen again, before kissing his son goodbye and leaving for another fight.

Matt had never been in the church this late at night before, nor had he ever been alone with a priest before, so he quickly snuck out of the back office to wander around, more out of curiosity than anything. He found a small flight of stairs and climbed up, wondering if they led to the roof, because he’d always wanted to go to the roof of a building, even if his dad had never let him.

But when he opened the small door at the top of the stairs, he didn’t find a roof. He found the organ.

Matt had never seen the organ before. He’d heard it, and he always liked listening to the music during mass, even if the rest of mass could be kind of boring. But this was the first time he’d seen it, and for a four-year-old from a family without much to its name, the organ was breathtaking. Two layers of piano keys, a plethora of big bronze pipes that for all the world looked to little Matty like pure gold, the stained-glass window in the image of an angel, filtering dim streetlight onto the keys.

It was a sight to behold for young Matthew Murdock, so, being the curious little devil he was, he climbed up onto the bench and began playing.

He was, by no stretch, Mozart or Bach or Beethoven – he didn’t sit at the keys and flex his fingers and play beautiful music out of thin air. But Matt Murdock was talented in more ways than one, and he discovered playing keys next to each other sounded weird, but keys one apart sounded better, and then he sounded out a commercial jingle and a tv show theme and a song he vaguely remembered from mass a few days before. Father Lantom heard the organ and climbed the steps too, and there he found four-year-old Matthew Michael Murdock, plunking out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with his two stubby index fingers, smiling like he’d never been happier.

When his father came back to pick him up a few hours later, Matt was still plunking away, this time at a piano tucked in a back room to keep the neighbors from complaining. Jack Murdock gave Father Lantom a curious look, but the priest just smiled. Neither of them had seen Matthew this happy in a long time.

* * *

He started learning piano in bits and bursts; Father Lantom taught him what keys and notes and chords were, showed him how to read music, helped shape his hands. Matt had piano fingers when he was younger – skinny and dexterous, not too long but certainly not stubby after he turned seven. When he got older, his fingers got wider and stiffer, knuckles bloody, better for punching than playing. But he always kept his fingernails cut down to the beds. Even after he stopped.

The lessons happened after mass, after Sunday School, when Matt was bored and had nothing else to do but walk two blocks down to the church and spend an hour or two playing music, learning and listening and loving the way he could make something so beautiful with just his fingers and some focus alone. They weren’t official lessons, technically, since no one was paying or getting paid, but Father Lantom taught and Matthew learned, and that was all that mattered.

His dad liked listening to him play. He wasn’t very musical himself, but he loved listening to music, anything from rap to jazz to classical string quartets. They didn’t have a piano or a keyboard. The only place Matt could really play was the church, and sometimes his dad would stick around and listen to him piece together a new song, or maybe Matt and Father Lantom would ask him to stay and he’d hear his son play a song he’d prepared just for him. Jack Murdock’s chest would swell with pride, clapping and cheering and embarrassing Matty, but his son loved every minute of it. It made him feel like it was all worth it.

* * *

Matt went blind when he was nine years old, and he didn’t touch a piano again until he was twelve.

A lot happened between nine and twelve. He lost his sight. His father died. Stick came into his life and left just as abruptly. He was lost and alone, and he could fight, but he couldn’t see, and his father and Stick were gone, and for all Matt knew, they were never coming back. His father certainly wasn’t coming back. Matt had heard his heart stop even before he ran into that alley.

The nuns treated him like he was broken, like a lost puppy in need of constant watch and support. How other kids treated him varied, but he didn’t have any friends, and that spoke for itself. So Matt spent most of his time alone, practicing what Stick taught him, learning how to use his senses to spot when someone hadn’t slept or how long milk still had before it spoiled, or to beat up bullies that thought being blind made Matt helpless. It didn’t.

He was hiding from the nuns after one such incident, wondering if he could explain the bruises on his knuckles away, when he stumbled across the back room with the piano.

Matt hadn’t thought he’d be able to play piano after he went blind. He was too busy trying to dull his senses and learn braille, and then, later, mourn his father’s death and train with Stick. Music hadn’t crossed his mind a lot in the past three years. There’d been too much else to think about.

But now, he had nothing, just an empty hole in his chest that’d been torn back open and was waiting to be filled.

So Matt sat down at the piano bench and found middle C. And he played.

* * *

He kept playing until he was about seventeen.

Matt learned how to read music in Braille and taught himself anything he wanted, from classical to jazz to pop to ragtime. He’d sometimes dabble on his own, make up tunes and put chords underneath, or work the other way around, or he’d figure out how to play a song he’d heard a thousand times on the radio just by using his ear alone. He had good ears for that, in more ways than one – Matt could tell the piano was off key before anyone even noticed, and he could memorize a song after hearing it three times. Not everyone could do that. Especially not the former.

The nuns had him play during mass, teaching him church hymns, filling the tiny chapel with music from the honky tonk upright piano that did nothing to replace the sound of an organ in Matt’s ears. When he was fifteen, he snuck out and slipped back into his old church, climbing the stairs and discovering the organ all over again. He couldn’t see the pipes or the keys or the little stained-glass window, but he remembered it, what it looked like. Matt ran his hands over the instrument gently, curiously, soaking in everything he could – the slight dips in the keys after years of fingers playing them, the grain of the wood, the black keys, the white, the hum of the bronze pipes against the air vent current, the scent and taste of dust and old paper. He sat down on the creaky bench and placed his hands on the keys, realizing suddenly they were shaking. That there were tears on his eyes, streaking down his cheeks.

He played one note, to ground himself. Matt had perfect pitch. Of course he did.

The sound echoed throughout the empty church, and he found himself smiling.

His music brought Father Lantom out of his office and up to the organ, and there he found the boy he’d taught music and magic to, oh so long ago, a boy he hadn’t seen in years and wondered if he’d ever see again. He told this to Matt, and Matt smiled, saying he was sorry, but even after all these years, Matt still couldn’t see him again.

Father Lantom paused, and then he burst out laughing, shaking his head. Matt grinned; no one ever laughed at his blind jokes.

No one except him.

* * *

At seventeen, Matt just got too busy with school to play all that much, except on Sundays during mass, so piano (and boxing, and practicing Stick’s martial arts training) took the sideline in favor of academics. He wanted to be a lawyer, and he couldn’t do that with shitty grades. If he wanted to make his father proud – to make _himself_ proud – he had to focus.

He didn’t have much of an opportunity to play in college. Which he would’ve been more upset about, but he had Foggy. That sort of made up for it, considering he was the first friend Matt had had in about nine years.

After that, Matt started focusing on other things too.

Things like listening to people in different dorms, different apartment buildings, different alleyways and sirens. Things like sneaking out at night in a mask and giving people what they deserved. Saving people who deserved to be saved.

He didn’t play piano much at all after that.

* * *

Jessica Jones, he decided, was a good person, despite how much she tried not to be.

And she was right. Trusting people was something he needed to learn how to do. Even if all trusting people had gotten him was hurt or almost killed, or worse, the people he loved killed.

_No man is an island_.

It’d be easier if he was. But then again, when did Matthew Michael Murdock ever do “easy?”

Still, he wasn’t quite sure why he did what he did – the girl, Lexi, mentioned a piano, and suddenly that was all Matt could think about. He wanted to play piano. He hadn’t played in so long, he’d forgotten what the keys felt like under his fingers.

He’d forgotten a lot of things, it seemed.

Maybe he should start remembering.

Jones – or Jessica, really, she knew about his dad, they should be on a first name basis by now – had been confused and more than a little apprehensive, which, you know, was expected. Playing piano in the middle of a conversation wasn’t exactly skilled social etiquette. But then again, Matt had never been very skilled in social etiquette. And he was blind. That, for some reason, gave him a pass for some things that had nothing to do with eyesight. 

So he sat down on the bench and played, a little tune he’d made up when he was fourteen, that he’d played over and over until he stopped playing at all.

Jessica was still waiting, watching, curious.

Her heart slowed. Not a lot, but enough for Matt to notice. Enough for him to know his music was calming her down.

He hadn’t expected that.

Then he heard the rustle, and he froze, and her heart rate spiked again.

_There was something in the piano_.

* * *

For a long time, all he felt when he woke up was pain.

He could deal with pain, he’d always dealt with pain, but it was the kind that made his body heavier than solid gold at the bottom of the sea, the kind that blurred his brain and twisted his stomach. The kind where, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t piece together what had happened, where he was, who was with him, where his friends were.

He wondered where Electra was, if she was dead, or if she’d survived somehow, like him. If this was considered living.

He wondered about Foggy and Karen, if they were safe, how they probably thought he was dead, how shitty he was for not being able to reach them. To tell them no, he was okay. Matt was okay. I’m here. Somehow.

He wondered about Jess and Luke and Danny, and Claire, god he worried about Claire. So many other people in the crosshairs too, people they all cared about. He’d warned them. _He’d warned them_.

And then he remembered the Hand was gone. They destroyed them. Or he hoped they had.

He had to believe they had.

* * *

They wouldn’t let him leave, not while he could still barely walk. He couldn’t call his friends. Everyone thought he was dead, and until he could get out, it would stay that way. It was simpler that way.

Matt found the piano though. There always seemed to be a piano.

He sat on the bench, fingers resting on the keys, every inch of him hurting from his hair to his toes. It was hard to sit up straight, to move his arms, to stretch his fingers. Everything was stiff and achey and wrong. He wanted to be with his friends, his family. _You are with your family_ , but no, no he wasn’t.

So he thought about his family – about his dad, about Father Lantom, about Stick. About Foggy and Karen and Claire. About Luke and Danny and Jessica. About Electra.

He thought about them all, until he could hold the tapestry of sounds and smells that represented them in his mind, clearly as if they were faces. As clearly as if they were there.

The pain subsided. The nausea faded. He felt tears in his eyes and a smile on his face.

Matthew Murdock sighed and realized his hands were on the keys.

_Play something_ , a voice whispered in his mind.

So he played.


End file.
